Mistress of Death
by Secondary Luminescence
Summary: Her death had always been somewhat blurry in her memory, and the time spent on the platform felt like something was missing. Ten years and four months later, Hannalee Potter finds out exactly what was missing from her memory. Fem!Harry, Character Death. Oneshot.


**A/N_:_**This actually started out as my first attempt at an Avengers/HP crossover. Quite clearly, it got away from me somewhere in the course of writing, and ended up more a HP/Percy Jackson crossover than anything else, and that only if you squint and tilt your head sideways.

Fair warning: this is a very odd and rather dark fiction, a fair leap from my usual style. The ending is not what one would expect, and this Fem!Harry is OOC from cannon.

Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling.

**Warnings: character death, Fem!Harry**

* * *

Anna remembered her second death much better than her first. When she'd died in the Forbidden Forest, it'd been easy, just as Sirius had said. She didn't have to do anything, just stand there. Even the day after the last battle, her memories of the forest were hazy, as if it had all been a dream.

Her second death was as different as could be possible.

* * *

With Voldemort dead, Hannalee Potter hadn't really known what to do with her life. Although others urged her to move on with her life, she was mired in grieving for both her boyfriend, Fred, and her only remaining ties to her own parents, Remus and Tonks, who'd died before they really got a chance to live.

It was nearly six months before Anna was able to shed enough of her guilt to allow her to interact somewhat normally with the rest of the Weasley household. Unsurprisingly, Fred's death had acted as a connection between Anna and George. Soon, Anna was the only one who could pull George out of his depressions and his erratic moods; Anna was the one who got him back to the shop; Anna was the one who spent days with him, helping to invent new items, trying her best to be as good a substitute for the spot that Fred had left behind as possible.

Three years passed before Anna and George gave up all pretenses and, to Molly's joy, got married. To preserve the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, George took up Anna's name, although the shop remained Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Almost two years after their wedding, Frederick James Potter was born. Ron and Hermione, just recently married themselves, were appointed godparents.

A little more than a year after Fred's birth, Sirius Arthur Potter and Albus Severus Potter joined the family. Lee Jordan, still a bachelor, was appointed godfather to Sirius, while Neville and his wife Hannah had the honor of being named godparents to Albus. Three years later, Anna gave birth to their last child, Melissa Hope Potter, whose godparents were Charlie Weasley and Luna Scamander.

* * *

Anna died the second time on Melissa's first birthday. The entire family had traveled to Romania to visit Melissa's godfather, who hadn't seen her since the bonding ceremony had taken place. Luna was also in the area with her husband, Rolf, and joined them at the Dragon Reserve.

The nine of them had just sat down, with an oddly frosted cake (made by Luna) set in front of a confused Melissa, when loud klaxons began to sound. The adults all tensed and turned to look at Charlie, whose face had paled dramatically. The children fidgeted as they looked hungrily at the cake.

"What's the alarm for, Charlie?" Anna asked as casually as possible, combing her fingers through Melissa's curly red hair, so unlike her older brothers' black locks.

"Rogue dragon," Charlie croaked, sliding off the bench of the picnic table Anna had conjured. "You should all get to the emergency bunker."

Even Luna didn't have anything to say as Charlie nodded once to them and sent a streak of silver light off towards the main part of the reserve's buildings before racing off after it. She could hear him summoning a broom as he ran.

Anna stood and handed a squirming Melissa to Luna, who accepted her with an uncharacteristically serious look on her face. Rolf picked up Albus and followed Luna in the direction that Charlie had indicated.

"Follow Auntie Luna and Uncle Rolf," Anna commanded Fred and Sirius. "Fred, you're in charge of Sirius, alright?" Fred, usually a boisterous five year old, nodded seriously and clasped hands with his three year old brother. The two of them ran off as fast as they could after Luna and Rolf, catching up quickly to the older couple, who had lingered for just that purpose.

Anna turned to George. "Stay," she said quietly, approaching him and clutching the fabric of his shirt. "Please?"

A loud, angry roar sounded before George could respond. Hannalee shifted in his arms until she could see where the noise had come from. A large, winged form took shape in the sky, partially obscured by smoke, doubtlessly from a burning building. Faint yells and screams could be heard as well.

"They need my help," George said stubbornly, his face also paler than normal so that his freckles stood out and the scar tissue where his ear used to be didn't contrast as much as it usually did.

Anna couldn't disagree; as they watched, the dragon breathed a great gout of flame over the ground beneath it. Before she could say anything else, the dragon flapped its wings and turned from the main compound, soaring towards - "The kids!" Anna gasped, glancing towards where Luna, Rolf, and her children had gone. They were only halfway to the stone building that marked the underground bunker. When she looked back at the dragon, it was already a third closer than it had been just a few seconds before.

She forced down a sudden spout of terror - her children, her little babies! - and gripped her wand with determination. Hannalee was glad that she'd forsaken robes, although her modest skirt wasn't much better. George had taken similar steps, pulling out his own wand and casting flame-retardant charms on both of them, although the two of them knew that the basic charms were next-to-useless in the face of dragon-fire.

"Together?" Anna asked, glancing over at him.

George nodded tersely.

"I love you," Anna said. George didn't say anything; he just kissed her roughly. They clasped hands, much as Fred and Sirius had done only a few minutes before, and started running towards the dragon. It had slowed down a bit, and as they got closer Anna could see that it had an injury to one of its wings. She pointed it out to George, who nodded grimly.

The dragon, a Ukrainian Ironbelly, landed with an earth-shaking thump. Anna and George halted a good two hundred yards from it; they didn't know how far it could project its fire. "You curse, I'll protect?" Anna suggested. She knew she was more powerful than George, but not by much, and she certainly knew better shields, while George had a wider range of hexes, curses, and jinxes in his repertoire.

As they battled, Anna was exquisitely aware of everything around her. Three minutes after George fired his first curse - an obscure lobotomizing curse, if she was right - the dragon keepers joined them, prevented from Apparating by their own wards, which had been designed to keep thieves out. Anna saw Charlie working with a stocky brunette woman who normally worked the kitchens, Hilda.

The fight was both terrifying and liberating. Hannalee hadn't had a chance to exercise her considerable powers like this for six years, and this was without the Elder Wand, which, along with the Resurrection Stone and Invisibility Cloak, was hidden away in the bowels of Gringotts in an anonymous vault.

Hilda was the first to fall. The Ironbelly's thick, armored tail whipped around and hit her solidly. Anna thought she heard Hilda's spine snap in two from a hundred yards away. With Hilda taken care of, the dragon turned to Charlie, visibly gearing up to burn him to a pile of ashes and melted bone.

"CHARLIE!" George bellowed, bolting towards his brother. Hannalee swore as the dragon, alerted by George's yell, turned its massive head. She raced after her husband, Fred's dead body flashing in her mind's eye. She wouldn't see George like that, too. Anna caught up to George in a flash; she'd always been the faster runner. The dragon let go its fiery breath, and with a massive lunge, she pushed George to the ground. She had just enough time to smile, and say, one last time, "I love you, George," before the flames caught her mid-stride, furling around her in macabre beauty. The charm George had placed on her lasted a grand total of half a second before sputtering out; not enough time to get out of the almost white gout of flames.

As the pain overtook her, worse than the Cruciatus, she called up the faces of her children and godchildren. Her last thought was a question more than anything: _Why doesn't the flame-freezing charm work on magical fire?_

* * *

The platform was just the same as last time, and just like ten years ago, Hannalee woke up naked. It didn't matter, though. She was dead, irrevocably dead, this time. She sat up, and then stared in confusion at her bare body. Gone were the marks of motherhood: none of the stretch marks, nor the faint scar from the C-section from the twins delivery, and the layer of fat that had accumulated from her three pregnancies was no longer there, leaving her body looking as it had at twenty. Even her breasts were smaller, back to how they'd been before marriage and subsequent pregnancies.

"Odd," she said out loud. Then she reconsidered. Hadn't Sirius and Remus looked younger in death? Yes, they had. The memory of that night was much clearer now that she was dead; odd, the idiosyncrasies of death...

"Hannalee Grace Potter." The voice, smooth, deep, and hypnotic, came from everywhere at once. Anna didn't know where she'd heard it before, but it sounded familiar.

"Who are you?" Anna asked, turning around. Her hair had somehow grown long again, brushing against her bare skin halfway down her back, a length it hadn't reached since her days on the run with Ron and Hermione. It had been just barely to her shoulders before, but she supposed that it had burnt first, so by rights she should be bald. "Where are you?" No one answered. "Show yourself!" she commanded sharply.

"By your command, Master," the voice sounded, and suddenly she found herself facing a being. She knew instinctively that it wasn't human, even before she realized that what she'd at first mistaken for robes were in reality wings; large feathery wings that glimmered in shades of blue, black and purple.

The being knelt before her, head bowed respectfully to the ground. The being was male in appearance, lean and muscular, with skin the color of teakwood and black hair flowing loose, obscuring his face from her view.

Hannalee frowned. "Why do you call me that?" she asked.

"You are my rightful Master," the being answered, still kneeling, face towards the ground.

Uncomfortable with the obeisance, which reminded her too much of Voldemort, Anna said, "Stand up, please."

"Yes, Master."

She winced. "Don't call me Master."

"As you wish, Mistress." Anna refrained from saying anything; clearly, this was a being after Dobby's heart.

When the being stood upright in front of her, Anna was hard pressed to keep from gaping. He was the most beautiful person she'd ever seen, surpassing even Fleur. His regal face, honey-gold eyes, and sleek black hair made him seem like a dark angel; he was timeless and remote, yet at the same time, she saw something in his eyes that called to mind bloody fields, warm fires, and hospital rooms. When his wings shifted, she flinched. The rustling of the feathers was the exact sound that accompanied the Killing Curse, the sound of life fleeing, or death rushing towards you, depending on the target.

"You are Death," she said softly. Somehow, even though the golden eyes roamed her body, she didn't feel embarrassed. Death himself was only wearing a simple black loincloth, which displayed wiry yet muscular legs and a lean yet defined torso.

"You are my Mistress," he countered.

There was a moment of silence, in which Death rustled his wings again, filling the otherwise silent air with the chilling sound that Anna had heard far too many times. "Why are you here?" Hannalee asked at last.

"Do you remember our last meeting, Mistress?"

"I - no." Try as she might, Anna could not recall ever seeing this man before. Although her other memories of the time leading up to her first death were clearer, the actual death itself, besides the blurry memory of a train platform and a short talk with Albus Dumbledore, were too - _old? obscured? intangible?_ - to be properly recalled.

"It is as it should be, then," Death said. "If I may?" Anna nodded her permission, and Death gestured. The surroundings changed.

Instead of the train platform, they stood in a garden of obsidian. Nothing lived. The trees and plants were perfectly sculpted from the glasslike stone, the paths made of polished slabs of the black rock. Cool silk settled against her body as a sleek length of fabric - black, like everything else - wrapped itself loosely around her in a toga-esque fashion.

"This way," Death said, walking so languidly that he seemed to glide. Anna followed, taking in with fascination and awe the stark beauty of her surroundings. The stone plants she passed by were carved with such detail that the trees had bark, and no two leaves were the same. The polished stone beneath her feet was pleasantly cool, yet radiated an odd warmth.

"Here." Death had stopped walking, and gestured to what was clearly a table with two chairs, situated next to a pool of inky black water, with a waterfall of the same impossible color feeding into it, trickling artistically down a series of boulders. As Anna sat, the fine hairs at the nape of her neck prickled when she realized that there were no ripples of disturbance from where the waterfall met the pool.

Death took the seat across from her. "Where are we?" Anna asked. The garden was eerie, yet beautiful.

"My home, when I have the time to come back," Death replied. Anna noticed for the first time that he didn't blink, and that his eyes didn't have pupils.

"It's very beautiful," she murmured.

Death bowed his head in acceptance of the compliment. "Thank you, Mistress. It is kind of you to say so." Anna wanted to reprimand him for calling her Mistress, but knew that, like Dobby, and later, Kreacher, he would just come up with some other, more ridiculous, title, so she held her tongue. "Out last meeting was ten and a third years ago," Death said quietly. "I wanted to take you then, but your perceived purpose as a human was not yet fulfilled, and you did not wish to come. We rolled dice." He produced an odd set of dice from nowhere. Like everything else, they were made of obsidian, with bone-white Roman numerals etched on each facet of the sixteen-sided dice. 'X' and 'IV' faced up. "Ten years," Death said, gently laying a finger on the first hexadecahedron. "Four months." With a wave on his hand, the dice disappeared. "That was our agreement. You lived your ten years and four months. I took and destroyed your memories of the agreement, at your own behest."

Anna could understand why she'd asked for such a thing. If she'd known that she had only ten years to live, she most likely would not have married, would not have had her children, so that her parting would have been easier for those who loved her. "And now?" she asked carefully.

Death smiled, and for the first time, Anna saw the cold, unfeeling side of the being. "Now you live death." Anna blinked, unsure as to what Death meant. Death continued without her prompting. "You roam the earth, neither dead nor alive, for the rest of time. Your family will not be able to see you," Death warned. "No matter how close you get, those who knew you as Hannalee Grace Potter will be unaware of your presence; they shall not hear you, see you, smell you, feel you. Messages will never reach them, even as they pass to the next realm."

Anna felt tears escaping the corner of her eyes, but didn't bother to wipe them away. What Death described sounded like hell on earth. She would be able to watch her family's grief, but would be unable to comfort them. She would watch her children grow up without her. Melissa wouldn't remember her, and the twins would only have the faintest of memories, perhaps of her voice or her hair or her eyes. Even Fred, her firstborn, wouldn't remember her clearly. He was only five. And George, her beloved George, who had lost his other half and survived, only to go through it again. If he was even alive...

Hannalee closed her eyes as the extent of what her future, eternal and endless, held, sunk in. Emotional pain rippled through her body. Loathing herself for being such a coward, yet unable to face the next hundred thousand years with memories of people and places she would never again hold close, she pleaded, "Take them?"

Death didn't even ask. He reached across the table and pressed a single finger to the middle of her forehead. Hannalee sighed and relaxed bonelessly into the chair, darkness descending upon her.

And thus the Mistress of Death, utterly cold and unfeeling for the souls she harvested, was born.

* * *

**Timeline:**

Last Battle: May 2, 1998

Married: June 5, 2001

Fred born: February 17, 2003

Sirius and Albus born: August 23, 2004

Melissa born: September 2, 2007

Sorry about the above. I considered taking the timeline out, but left it in, in case anyone was curious about dates.


End file.
